


Red is the Color of Laughter

by Etienne_Bessette



Category: Batman (Earth-3), Batman (Movies - Nolan)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Bad Jokes, Crossover, Dark, Dimension Travel, Drama, Earth-3 (Crime Syndicate Universe), Gen, Knight vs Anarchy, Mad Science, Nolanized Earth-3, Nolanverse, Other, Team Knight, This was supposed to be a one-shot and then it grew a plot, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-06-09
Updated: 2012-08-11
Packaged: 2017-11-20 14:19:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/586298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etienne_Bessette/pseuds/Etienne_Bessette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jokester sometimes thinks that if he'd had the misfortune to have lived in Gotham all his life, he wouldn't know what color is.</p>
<p>Crossover between Earth-3 (Crime Syndicate Universe) and Nolanverse Batman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a simple, one-shot response to the LJ community knightvsanarchy prompt: red. And then it grew a plot because I _couldn't_ just leave it sitting where chapter 1 ends, and _then_ I thought, 'hey, this would be a perfect excuse to bring Jokester and Owlman into Batman's Gotham, let's do that', and it grew into what will undoubtedly be a multi-chapter epic. What have I done.
> 
> It should also be noted that this is an altered, Nolanized version of the Earth-3 that originally appeared in 'Countdown to Final Crisis' and 'The Search for Ray Palmer'. [Overlithe](http://overlithe.livejournal.com/) has put a _great_ deal of thought and examination into the Earth-3 universe (specifically regarding Jokester and Owlman), and I find her view of the world to be rather _brilliant_ , so I have used some of the information in her [ Big Earth-3 Meta Post](http://overlithe.livejournal.com/35913.html), specifically the back of the envelope timeline. (This is also an excellent place to go if you have absolutely no clue what Earth-3 is)

Jokester sometimes thinks that if he'd had the misfortune to have lived in Gotham all his life, he wouldn't know what color is. Gotham is grey in every sense: in sight, in sound, in smell, in taste, and in touch. Even when the sun is bright and not smothered by stormclouds or haze, all the light does is bleach the streets and smog-stained buildings like a spotlight casting over rubble while the cockroaches and spiders scuttle into deeper black cracks where the brightness can't reach them. The stains just stand out more starkly during the day than they do at night.

Even death is without color, Jokester has noticed. People don't die with loud shrieks of bursting crimson; they die with quiet gurgles burbling black from their throats, or with shredded screams that sound like rotting cotton being ripped apart. They die in dank, filthy alleyways, blood oozing down nearby drains like thick ichor. They die with their bellies opened and smelling like sewers. They die feeling cold and with greasy grit roughening the pockets in their skin.

Jokester is different. When he drops down onto the streets of Gotham in his bright clothing and circus smile, he looks like a hole in the universe. He wears the vibrant Phoenician purple of ancient royalty, but he laughs and dances like a court jester. His scars aren't black and rotten with the smell of fear; they're painted brilliant red and they laugh even when Jokester cannot.

Jokester remembers believing that life in Gotham would be freer, that he could start over once more and finally escape the bullies and bad luck that had diseased his life up until then. Everyone had said that college is incomparably better than high school, and that big cities afford opportunities that he would never see in a small, quiet town on the outskirts of Arkham.

Maybe that was true for other big cities, but not for Gotham. The bullies are just bigger, and armed, and they don't stop chasing you once you make it home from school. No one can stand on the sidelines, and no place is safe. Everyone knows it, so everyone who stays in Gotham buries their dreams beneath the dust.

Well, not _everyone_. There had been Eve.

_But Eve is gone,_ Jokester thinks. _Eddie is gone, and Duela is never coming back. Stop dwelling. It's almost showtime._  
  
Jokester slinks down the alleyway, ten feet above the ground and boots silent upon damp roof shingles. He can be as stealthy as shadows when he wants to be; the would-be muggers are closing in on a young couple who had thought to take a shortcut through Gotham's back alleys. Stupid move, even in the middle of the afternoon. They must be new to the city.

Thanks to Jokester, they'll live to learn not to make the same mistake again. He drops down mallet-first into the midst of the muggers and whacks their skulls until they see blinding white stars and nothing else. No blood--only bruises. Jokester doesn't kill--not because he doesn't _want_ to, sometimes, but because he wants to prove to Owlman that he can survive without shedding his colors, without becoming as black and dirty as everyone else.

Maybe he'll have to break that rule someday, but he's not going to break it for mere alley trash.

He ties the muggers up while they're still unconscious and pins a dandelion-yellow smiley button to each of their shirts. The couple is gone; they'd darted away the moment that the fight had started. Jackie can't blame them. The guy that beats up the people who attack you is more likely to be the new crime management than your savior. And besides, even people who know Jokester is the good guy don't hang around long enough to thank him; where Jokester goes, Owlman is likely to swoop in.

_Where is that flying rodent-eater, anyway?_ Jokester wonders as he monkeys back to the rooftops and darts in search of more crime to bust. He hasn't seen or heard of Owlman in days. That makes Jokester nervous. It means that Owlman is planning something _big_.

But there's no sense worrying about _that_ , either. Jokester has no one to go to for leads. Not even a crazy person would spill information about Owlman, no matter _what_ Jokester threatened to do.

A sharp, strangled noise catches Jokester's attention. He veers towards it and perches over the rain gutter to squint down into the darkness. The daylight doesn't reach this deep in the Narrows, so he can't find the source at first. He listens, and then he hears it again: a small child's burbling sobs. He sees the kid's shape in the the shadows as a quivering blotch of grey that doesn't quite fit into the black around it.

_Aw, man,_ Jokester thinks. _That ain't right._ He swings himself over the roof edge and lands, polished boots clacking brightly against the dirty concrete. He hears the child's breathing hitch, followed by the scuffle of cloth. "Hey, kiddo, it's okay. I'm not gonna hurt you," Jokester says reassuringly. "Are you hurt? Lost? Where are your parents?" _Probably dead,_ Jokester thinks, _but here's hoping otherwise._

He gets close enough to make out details. The child is a boy, no older than seven. He's thin, scraped, and terrified. He has his arms huddled around his chest beneath a worn jacket. Jokester pauses six feet away and crouches down. "Don't worry. I'll protect you. I'm the Jokester. Are you hurt?"

The boy stares at him with wide black eyes. He does not blink. His arms twist beneath the jacket, and Jokester thinks that maybe the boy _is_ hurt after all, so he steels himself for the sight of something ragged and ugly.

Instead, the boy's arm emerges with something small, black, and cylindrical clutched tightly in his fingers. He yanks a shiny metal bit out of one end, hurls the object at the Jokester, and dives beneath a metal box that Jokester hadn't noticed until now.

Jokester has enough time to think, _well, I always wanted to go out with a BANG_ , before white floods his eyes and stinging silence stuffs his ears. Vaguely he senses a strange-smelling cloth pressing against his nose, and then nothing more.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Through the looking glass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been waaaaay too long since I posted the first part of this. I also have no idea where I'm going with it. This was supposed to be a one-shot. Then it grew a plot.

  


Somewhere beyond the looking glass, in a place where everything that matters has been flipped, a man with a bag on his head holds a gun. It's not a normal gun; it has shiny silver coils for a barrel and instead of a magazine clip it has a glass cylinder filled with bubbling fluorescent blue liquid.

It's the first time that Crane has tried building anything like this gun (he's a _psychiatrist_ for god's sake, not a mechanic), so he holds it awkwardly and fingers the bright red button like he's afraid of it. Like he knows that he's not one-hundred percent in control of the situation, and hates the feeling.

A man with green hair and bright clothing stands twenty feet ahead of him and out in the open. He's carrying a submachine gun and he's wearing clown paint that's supposed to give the impression that he's smiling.

It doesn't. No one will ever mistake the expression on the clown's face for a smile, no matter how much red he uses.

The streets and buildings and air of Gotham are all grey; grainy and off-white like a ratty old photograph. Everything is shades of black and white, crumbling at the edges where decay creeps in. But Gotham isn't lost yet; the city holds itself upright with blind pride and clings to ancient, abandoned ideals.

As if ignoring the rot is going to make it go away.

As he watches the clown skip down the middle of an open street, the sackcloth-masked man is reminded of decay. With his sickly colors and his crazed smile, the clown looks like a voracious bacteria that infects everything it touches with delirium and necrosis, eating a hole into the universe. _Or maybe_ , Crane thinks, _just eating away the top layer_. Everything has more than one face, he knows. Personas lie hidden beneath myriads of masks made for every time and place. Peel away the fragile flakes of Gotham’s mask, and you will reveal the true nature of human beings festering underneath—the truth that everyone is so terrified of.

Crane holds the gun close to his chest. _Fear_ is his interest, not chaos like the man skipping down the street in front of him. But, for the moment, their aims coincide. The clown wants to prove that people are only as good as they can afford to be, and he wants to have fun doing it. The psychiatrist wants to watch what happens when people are forced to confront the horrors within themselves.

Also, you just don’t argue when the fully-armed homicidal lunatic busting you out of Arkham tells you to help out with his latest scheme. No matter what his former colleagues might say, Crane isn’t _that_ crazy.

“Heeell- _o_ La- _dies_ and _gentle-_ men,” the clown crows, flinging his arms—one hand still clutching the machine gun—wide and spinning in place. There are policemen lining the streets, but they don’t fire. The Joker’s coat is open, the blooming purple edges of a mottled sickly green bruise, and there are enough explosives strapped to his vest to annihilate the street, everyone on it, and the buildings nearby. He’s even wearing fuzzy purple earmuffs decorated with blasting caps blinking with red lights and wired into the explosives on his chest, just in case the police get the brilliant idea of trying to headshot him. The good cops won’t chance it, and the bad cops have already been bought. “Did’ja _miss_ me?”

Crane hangs back amidst the cluster of henchclowns. He does not feel safe here, even though the henchclowns are heavily armed, and the police are focused mostly on the Joker. Crane is the one holding the fluorescent, strange gun, and the Bat has never been inconvenienced overly much by mere minions.

“Ya know, you guys are _good_ ,” Joker says. He wags an index finger, and the tone of his voice is somehow both patronizing and touched with grudging respect. “With the ferries? Ha- _ha!_ I _really_ thought I had you there.”

Crane nervously scans the silhouettes of the buildings against the darkened sky. He only has one shot at this— _literally_ one shot. He eases his trembling fingers away from the red button, takes a deep, steadying breath, and waits.

\+ + +

Jokester knows that he isn’t dead; his head is one massive ache that throbs in time with his heartbeat. He’s tied to a chair, but he’s alive, and he doesn’t know why or where or who is responsible (though he can hazard a pretty good guess on that last one). But thinking is _painful_ , so instead he reflects on how _cheated_ he feels. _Exploding_ off stage right, while trying to help a battered and lost child? Now _that_ was an exit. Except it looks like someone had the bad manners to take him alive, which probably means torture in his near future.

On the bright side, this means he’ll get one final punchline. So maybe it isn’t all that bad.

Jokester can smell dust, musty and old and stale, mingling with what he would think is rust if only he didn’t know better. The soft creak of leather and the cold, sharp hiss of shifting metal blades tells Jokester whom else is nearby.

“I know you’re awake, freak,” Owlman says.

Jokester rolls his head towards the sound of Owlman’s voice. He can’t see; his eyes are bound with a heavy cloth, the pressure of which around his head _really_ isn’t helping with the throbbing inside his skull. “You are the _lousiest_ date _ever_ ,” he says. “I mean, I dig the blindfold and handcuffs. But,” he gives the air a distinct sniff, “a storage shed? A girl’s got _standards._ ”

Silence.

 _Okay_ , the Jokester thinks. _Fine._ “You could’a just _told_ me and I’d’ve shown up. Didn’t have to use a little kid as a lure.”

The creak and shuffle of leather moves abruptly closer to him, and a rough, gauntleted hand rips the blindfold from his head. Pressure explodes into a halo of white pain. “ _OW._ ”

“I want you,” Owlman growls, “to see how pathetic you are.”

Jokester waits a couple of seconds before he tries to open his eyes. When he does, nausea shoots up from his stomach and sinks claws into his sinuses. The single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling appears to sway, but, then, so does the blue and silver smear which can only be Owlman. So Jokester closes his eyes again. He’ll open them once the room has had enough of gymnastics and decides to stick a landing. “Ya know,” he drawls, “You’re really _shit_ at the whole witty banter business. I don’t ask for much. Would it _kill_ ya to—”

The only warning he has is the sharp creak of leather fractions of a second before something impacts his jaw, snapping his head to the side and burning his thoughts as white pain explodes behind his eyes and at the back of his skull. “Shut up,” Owlman snarls. The harsh tone scrapes the inside of Jokester’s head like sandpaper on flesh. He grimaces.

“All I want to hear from you is screaming,” Owlman says. Jokester’s head is throbbing too much for him to to snap a witty retort. Instead he flexes his arms to test the ropes holding him down, and feels what can only be wire wrapped around his limbs.

Jokester hears Owlman shift away from him, his footsteps receding a few feet away. Then he hears the scrape of metal on metal, and he thinks, _Here we go._

_\+ + +_

Batman always takes out the henchmen first. Crane remembers this, even if he remembers little else from the night that Ras al Ghul descended upon Gotham. But there is nowhere else to hide for the moment, so he remains where he is, armed with a strange, volatile weapon that the cops keep eyeing nervously, and surrounded by brutes holding uzis.

The Joker grins. The expression looks more like a bloodstained grimace. “No one—none of you—know what _reall-y_ happened. You think that your ah, little _White Knight_ got eaten up by the Big Bad _Bat_. Let me tell ya what _really_ happened.”

Crane looks away from the madman, no longer paying attention to his rambling, and scans the crumbling lips of the apartment complex roofs around them. Somewhere in the shadows, the Bat is watching and waiting. Threads of nervous anticipation spider up from his churning stomach and knot in his throat. Crane never used to feel this nervous. Fear was something that other people experienced. And then Ras al Ghul fell upon Gotham, and Scarecrow burst fully-formed from Crane’s mind. What was left behind knows how it feels to be afraid.

\+ + +

The simplest tortures are sometimes the most effective ones. Owlman does not need pears or racks or cradles to cause unbearable agony. Rats are plentiful and hungry in Gotham, and razors are easy to obtain. Owlman likes using knives the most, particularly when it’s _personal_ , and he wants to watch the Jokester bleed.

Jokester keeps his eyes open, partly because it’s easier to bear the pain when he knows it’s coming, but mostly because he knows that Owlman wants to _see_ the agony and surrender in his eyes, and Jokester will make sure that Owlman never has the satisfaction; he will laugh with his eyes when his voice no longer can.

Thomas Wayne was a surgeon before he joined the Gotham PD. His son inherited his steady hands and his keen interest in anatomy. Bruce Wayne knows how to exsanguinate a man, slowly and painfully, with hundreds of tiny lines incised over the entire body. When the razor finds the Jokester’s throat, he knows that Owlman isn’t going to slit it open. One gloved hand seizes Jokester’s purple hair by the roots and yanks his head back. The other hand slices tiny cuts in his throat, from his chin down to his collarbone, too shallow to pose any threat in and of themselves, but deep enough to sting and draw blood. They will bite sharply any time the Jokester tries to speak.

As if that will stop him.

But, then again, that’s probably the point.

Once the razor moves from his throat, the Jokester chuckles even though the movement hurts. He feels the sharp edge travel down, snagging on fabric. At first it strikes him as odd that Owlman has left his clothing on, but as he listens to the purr of parting threads, he thinks he understands. Jokester’s clothing is a part of what he has become. Without it, he’s just Jackie. _With_ it, he’s the Jokester and everything that the Jokester represents, and by slicing through the costume, Owlman is cutting down the symbol along with the man.

“That kinda tickles, Owlsie,” the Jokester says. He knows full well that he’ll pay for it in blood, but hey, he’s going to die anyway, right?

Owlman punches him and leaves a slice in his cheek, parallel to his scar. Blinding white pain explodes in his already purple-bruised jaw, and the trickle of liquid spilling down his skin is both familiar and oddly grounding. Jokester spits out blood and grins up at Owlman’s stony, masked face. He feels his cheek split further apart with the movement. “Ya know, red is the color of laughter.”

“I’ll make it the color of your screams.”

\+ + +

The Joker is laughing. The sound scrapes against Crane’s thoughts like sandpaper tearing through rotted cotton. Crane’s eyes dart away from the rooftops and focus on the clown instead.

That’s when it happens.

No one sees the shadow detach from the overhang three stories up. The darkness has collected there unobserved, and now it drips down, sudden and silent, until at the last seconds Crane sees the Joker’s murky green eyes flicker upwards, and Crane follows his gaze in time to see shadows bloom outward above him.

_One shot! One shot only!_

Crane sweeps his gun up, his fingers darting for the red button as the fluorescent chamber illuminates the panic in his eyes in a nauseatingly neon blue light. The gun doesn’t swivel even halfway to its target before Batman’s boots connect with a muffled _crunch_ , and Crane’s gun skitters out of his grasp as his head cracks against the pavement and darkness consumes him.

It all happens very quickly from that point onwards. The henchclowns are fodder, meant to buy a few seconds of time. The good cops (what few remain) are confused but ready; if they can take Batman down without the entire block going up, so much the better. The rest of the cops don’t intend to fire at all; the Joker knows how to threaten when he cannot buy a man’s loyalty, and the combination of both has given him the local PD in the palm of his purple-gloved hand.

Batman has taken out the obvious threats: the henchclowns and Crane’s strange, glass-chambered, glowing gun.

But with the Joker, the obvious threats are not always the real ones.

\+ + +

Owlman slices the razor through the fabric over Jokester’s left shoulder. The tip cuts through skin as well as cloth, pulling up rivulets of red in its wake. Jokester won’t shut up. He hasn’t stopped talking since Owlman started in on him in earnest. In this final act, silence would be a sign of defeat, and Jokester will never be beaten. Not even when breath rattles from his lungs in one last parody of laughter.

He can see Owlman’s jaw grinding his teeth together. Jokester’s voice is high and grating—deliberately so—and the more that he chatters and jibes, the more frayed Owlman’s patience becomes.

Jokester is bleeding from over three dozen cuts by now. The skin of his throat, left shoulder, and the middle of his chest where his vest and shirt have been ripped open are slick and scarlet and stinging. But the pain reminds the Jokester that he’s still alive, and the red reminds him to keep laughing.

\+ + +

The Joker moves like a predator: either slow, deliberate stalking, or lightning-quick strikes. It is the latter that he displays as he drops his submachine gun and whips open his coat. In a fluid movement, he draws a gun similar to the one that Crane has dropped, only much smaller—the size of a pistol—with a clear glass chamber that houses a bubbling fluorescent _green_ fluid. The Joker grins, lips splitting open around a skull-like grimace, and aims. He does not fire. Batman is a flurry of movement, and the mad clown cannot risk hitting one of his henchmen by mistake.

The last henchman drops. Batman looks up. Joker fires.

\+ + +

A high-pitched giggle bubbles up from Jokester’s throat. “It doesn’t matter what you do, Owlsie. I’ll always be the one that you could never break.” Jokester licks his bloodstained lips and says, “Who’s laughing now?”

Owlman bares his perfect teeth in an ugly snarl, and turns his wrist, the edge of the razor aimed at Jokester’s purple eyes. The muscles in his arm bunch, and Jokester prepares to see red.

Instead, he sees a flash of green right before the room explodes.

\+ + +

The is no time to dodge. As green envelops his vision, Batman flings a batarang in one last attempt to disable the Joker’s weapon before it can be used on anyone else. The black steel snicks through the air and lodges with a _crack_ in the glass chamber just as the glowing green shot impacts Batman in the center of his chest.

There is half a second of silence in which the Joker’s eyes go wide. Then, the gun explodes, sending a shockwave flashing through the street. Policemen shield their eyes against the blinding green light that is erupting from two epicenters: Batman and the Joker. Both figures are knocked back by the force of the explosion. Space itself seems to ripple, bending light like still water after a stone has been dropped in.

Then, something even stranger happens. The epicenters become mirrors—whatever the green liquid hits suddenly splits and kaleidoscopes outwards, equal and opposite reflections of one another. When purple clothing and black armor are thrown backwards, green clothing and blue-silver armor are thrown in the opposite directions.

When the ripples settle and the flash fades, four figures lie stunned on the cracked and grimy Gotham street where moments before there had only been two.

**(to be continued)**

  



End file.
